APOCALYPSE NOW, VOYAGER
Jay Russell
$14 (400, signed) 86p. Earthling
ISBN: 0974420387

Once in a while this jaded reviewer's heart goes pitty-pat when she opens a publisher's package and see an author's name on a book. Not often, mind you, but occasionally. Recently a thin parcel from Earthling Publications raised my pulse with novella Apocalypse Now, Voyager by Jay Russell. Even if I were not already enchanted with the author's previous work, that great title --Apocalypse Now, Voyager -- would have done the trick. The conjoining of a 1940s Bette Davis "woman's weepie" flick and Coppola's surrealistic, horrific film of the Vietnam War... it does get one's mind ticking! To top off the rush of anticipatory endorphins it's a Marty Burns story. Marty's one hell of a character. A former TV child star whose acting career was briefly revived with a private eye series, Marty sometimes plays the role of detective in real life. He is the quintessential Los Angeles guy: a connection to The Business and able to take only-in-Los Angles and sometimes beyond-the-normal events in stride without missing a step. Street-wise, but still savvy with the guys in suits, wiseass and wisecracking, Marty immediately adapts to any situation no matter how weird or how, well, Weird. This time out, Marty journeys into the heart of darkness by way of a dry river to the Other Side -- and no, we don't mean Burbank. Accompanying the corpse of a dead hooker in a Ralph's shopping cart, accompanied by a madwoman and a trans-species man-to-canine, Marty encounters a kid who can scare piranhas off a dead body and discovers the land of the Cat People. In other words -- it's a tender love story. Outrageously funny and genuinely touching, it's worth looking for.
-- Originally published: Cinemafantastique, February 2005

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